Editor’s Note: To mark the 25th anniversary of the Granville Farmers Market, each week, The Sentinel is spotlighting a different participating market vendor.

In an age of robotized carpet cleaners and increasingly complex (and expensive) vacuums, artisan Gary Rudolph affords his customers the opportunity to clean up the old-fashioned way.

Rudolph, a Heath resident, is owner of Rudolphs Brooms and Brushes. True to its name, his business offers his hand-crafted, often period-correct brooms, brushes and related implements.

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Some of many brooms crafted by Gary Rudolph.(Photo: Craig McDonald/The Sentinel)

“I started out making all handmade brooms with hickory handles like the ones used in the 1700s,” he explained. “Broom corn is really a sorghum. By 1810, they started making broom winding equipment which was really kind of the beginning of the machine age.”

At the July 8 Granville Farmers Market, Gary and his wife, Linda, were set up in their booth, Gary seated at his hand-crafted broom horse, demonstrating the craft of classic broom and brush making.

“I grew up on a farm,” he explained while crafting a “corn silker” brush. “And I somehow ended up with some broom corn seed. I planted it, then I ended up talking to a geneticist and he talked me into making brooms. It was the late 1970s…”

In Tennessee, he studied the art of crafting brooms in the traditional Appalachian-style.

In addition to years spent creating and selling his brooms and brushes, he also said he did a number of arts and crafts shows throughout the years, particularly during the” heydays of Longaberger.”

“I’d do eight to ten shows a day at the Homestead,” he remembered.

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A variety of brushes hand-crafted by Rudolph, a Heath resident.(Photo: Craig McDonald/The Sentinel)

A few years ago, after losing his enthusiasm for making brooms after having spent too many holidays and vacations doing so (“It lost its fun,” he said), he sold most of his equipment, but held on to a few hand tools and his personally crafted broom horse.

He eventually drifted back to making a few items by hand and found his love for the craft again. “It kind of fired me back up,” he said.

The Saturday Granville Area Chamber of Commerce Farmers Market is usually held from 8:30-noon on North Main Street at Broadway. However, the July 21 market is scheduled to be held in the parking lot of St. Edward’s Catholic Church, 785 Newark-Granville Road.